Toronto Star: These farmers CAN see the forest for the trees

It sounds too good to be true. But experiments at Guelph University have resulted in double the crop yield in drought years

Toronto Star – Sept 15, 2007
Cameron SmithA farming practice that results in better soil, more earthworms, much higher capture of carbon dioxide, less nitrogen runoff, more birds and insects, and double the crop yield in drought years – it sounds too good to be true.

Yet this is exactly what experiments at Guelph University are suggesting.

The most astonishing conclusion is that if farmers adopted the practice throughout the 455,000 square kilometres of marginal or degraded land currently being farmed, Canada could come within a hair’s breadth of meeting its Kyoto commitment with an 18.6 per cent reduction in the nation’s CO2 emissions.

The practice is called intercropping – planting crops between rows of trees. At Guelph, the rows of trees are 12.5 metres to 15 metres apart, and this year the crop is soybeans.